Vitality defeat NAVI 2-0 with two overtime wins!

A battle between NAVI and Vitality never seems to fail as the two biggest contenders for “The world’s best player” go head-to-head. Aleksandr “S1mple” Kostyliev has for many years been regarded as one of, if not the best player in the world. A French player by the name of Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, however, made his presence known in the Counter-Strike scene as he was crowned the best player in the world in his rookie season.

The first map between the two rosters took place on Nuke – a map that many of the teams have grown familiar with, as Nuke was the most played map in the prior Blast Premier Fall Series 2020. This time it was NAVI to pick into Nuke. It was also the Russian roster to start the map the strongest as they managed an early 4-0 lead. Vitality, however, answered back immediately as they expanded a lead of their own. With neither of the teams giving up the half ended as close as possible with a scoreline of 8-7 in favor of the French Vitality.

The second half was just as close as the first as both of the two teams gave it their all. “S1mple” was as impactful as always for NAVI and “ZywOo” was equally as important as both players were their team’s best-performing individual. With neither being able to close the map in 30 rounds, they headed to overtime to find a victor. A, assumingly, disappointed “S1mple” was forced to watch his team lose Nuke 15-19 to Vitality, despite him managing 33 kills in map one.

The second map of the series was set to take place on Vitality’s map pick Dust2. This, of course, meant the substitution of “Nivera” for “misutaaa” as Dust2 is one of the two maps where Vitality opts to use the Belgium 19-year-old. The map of Dust2, however, is one of NAVI’s favorites and with a “S1mple” on fire, nothing is going to be certain in map two of the series.

It was NAVI to start strongest as they managed to create a lead for themselves in the early stages of the map. It took an 8-1 lead in favor of NAVI before Vitality woke up and answered back. And what a beast the awoken Vitality roster was. They clawed themselves back into the game with a tremendous performance from the French roster lead by their star-player “ZywOo”. They mustered a comeback into a 14-9 lead.

NAVI, however, didn’t give up themselves. One round at a time they refused to hand away the series without a fight. After speeding up their t-side approach NAVI managed to tie up the score at 14-14 going into the last stage of map two. Both teams won a round making it 15-15 which, of course, meant overtime once again.

Being as close as possible Vitality ultimately defeats NAVI 19-17 on Dust2 making it their second overtime victory in the series. On Dust2 the question of the better player was answered by “ZywOo” as he ends the map with 38 kills leading his team to victory and a new round in the upper bracket.